Some issues are totemic and symbolise the challenges that remain in terms of achieving gender equality. The gender pay gap is one of them.

The average British woman earns around 80p for every £1 earned by a man. This discrepancy exists for several reasons: because women are concentrated in low-paid jobs and take on the lion’s share of unpaid work – particularly the care of children. But it is also because of pay discrimination, women being paid less than their male counterparts for the same work or work of equal value.

We don’t always hear this part of the story, but some recent cases have been reminders that it still exists. First, the BBC agreed to pay some of its female staff more, under threat of an equal-pay challenge. Essex University also decided to pay its female academics more to redress the balance in pay. Brainlabs gave every woman in the organisation a pay rise – the “pay gap tax”. There is a pattern here. Once employers compared their male and female salaries, they found an imbalance that they couldn’t explain away.

Research shows that this also happens at graduate entry level. Male graduates continue to earn more (£24–£27k) than female graduates (£21–£24k), even when compared with women who did the same subject, went to a similar university and went into the same industry.

The fact that some organisations have addressed this discrimination is a step in the right direction. But how many equal-pay claims do we really see? Very few. The lack of pay transparency in the workplace means it’s almost impossible to make pay comparisons with co-workers. Without that, you have no case. Employment tribunal fees are prohibitively expensive, the process can be extremely stressful and can take years to resolve. Moreover, claims that are brought are almost always settled before they get to tribunal, meaning the general public is less likely to hear about them.

New gender pay gap reporting regulations, due in October, will mean that employers with 250 staff or more (there are around 8,000 of them in the UK) will have to publish their gender pay gap figures for both basic salary and bonus payments. They will also be required to identify the number of male and female employees according to quartile pay bands throughout their organisations. This won’t give individuals the transparency they need to bring a claim, but it will force employers to think systematically about the gender pay gap and the inequities that may lie within their own organisations.

We at the Fawcett Society welcome the regulations, but we want to go further. We need a step change in assumptions, to start in a different place and break the male model of work. Every job should be advertised on a flexible working basis, unless there is a good business case not to. We need to end the motherhood penalty and move to a presumption of equality for leave entitlements, including paying enhanced rates for dads so that they can afford to take them. We need to extend the new requirements to smaller organisations, too (Fawcett recommends those with 50 employees or more).

With these changes, the gender pay gap may finally become something that motivates employers to act, because they want to be seen as an employer of choice for women in an increasingly competitive labour market. And that might just drive change.